Archive for November 15th, 2007

So, I was doing my usual blog-surfing (I managed to miss Project Runway! Dammit.) and I ran across this article on Jezebel. Sometimes I forget how far reaching the all-powerful media can be. I mean, seriously y’all. Once I read the exerpts, I (foolishly) went to the thread to see if it were really as bad as it seemed. Dear sweet God in Heaven. It was worse. Much, much worse. And I’d like to add that this is on Teen Vogue’s message boards, y’all. I mean…TEENAGERS WROTE THIS:

today i hade lemon zinger tea with one packet splenda 0 cal and water and took my meds…then during the day i just kept taking sips of hot tea to fil me up…. so far ive had o calories total!!! whooohooo…

but i still need some good exercising tricks..and tha kinda stuff…

share your skinny secrets!!

The responses to this thread? Whew. Here are a few:

good job!

Im on a diet right now because i want to lose alot of weight before December.

Soo… this is what i ate today:

3 plain rice cakes

2 small bites of a banana

(I diddnt eat it all at once- it was spread all throughout the day)

so it was

145 calories

Im planning on doing some crunches and leg lifts too

Btw, i love tea too! its great for weight loss – especially green tea- it makes you burn more calories!

I also love the feeling of hunger. I feel so clean and light and empty.

That last one damn near sent me over the edge. Man. Oh, and those reflections were from three seperate posters. Now, I do feel the need to point out that the entire thread isn’t filled with the high praise of not eating. Other young women came in and berated these girls, (and y’all know how I feel about that, so I’m not gonna include any of that here) but reading over the thread really made me think: what is all this fat hatred doing to the younger generation?

I mean, with all of the reports that obesity is gonna kill us, fat is bad, omgobesityepidemic, putting kids (four month olds!) into gyms…seriously y’all. Folks don’t realize the gravity of the images placed in the media. Children and teens don’t fully understand that all of these images they are bombarded with day after day after day are nowhere near real. Nowhere! But with all of the “War on Fat” rhetoric plugging up the airways and television…all these kids can think of is fat=bad and thin=good. What also got me was that the young women that were all about eating 145 calories per day is that they were AWARE that it was unhealthy…but they wanted to be thinner. In their minds, they NEEDED to be thinner. And trust me, not all doctors worry about your actual health, as long as you are skinny—or are becoming skinny. Where does the madness end, y’all?

Now, I’m not a health professional, but I’m thinking these young women need some help (I’ll add here that some of the responses were kind pleas for the “dieting” girls to please get some help). But the media, these doctors, these researchers, their followers—all that are on this fat is unhealthy and will kill you and it LOOKZ BAD OMG kick—need help too. They need to take a step back and look at what they are pushing these children to do to themselves.

I’m just not gonna go into how pissed I am that Teen Vogue has allowed this thread to stay up. I mean do these people monitor what’s on these threads? Clearly not. Because I reckon this thread don’t cross the line of “offensive”. Or at least not to them. Whatever.

It just breaks my heart to see that this is what the world is coming to. Folks aren’t focused on being healthy and living the best life they can. They’re focused on being thin—no matter the cost to their body or their psyche.

And that focus can have mentally draining and sometimes deadly consequences.

Addendum: So, I emailed BuddingStarlet this article (as I always do). Interestingly, her company (which I won’t name) has a policy on not using salty language in emails, so I have to be careful to edit my posts on days when my mouth is particularly filthy. Now, there’s one obvious swear word here, which I took out, but she still didn’t get the email. Why? “Ho” is in it. I was too tickled to not tell y’all about it…because if I edit out that part, she’s not gonna get the gist of the post. And the foolishness spreads.

One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use “ho ho ho” because it could frighten children and was too close to “ho”, a US slang term for prostitute.

Ok, folks, seriously? Why is everybody attacking St. Nick? Just as taking away Santa’s tummy wouldn’t make Santa…Santa anymore, taking away “ho, ho, ho” would diminish his image too. And it seems to me if folks feel that his laugh can be misconstrued otherwise needs to grab an encyclopedia, look up Saint Nicholas, and enlighten themselves.

But this whole thing makes me wonder what exactly these recruitment firms are reading into Santa’s laugh. Because, “ho, ho, ho” is a laugh. Don’t believe me? Go and grab yourself some early century literature (English or American, doesn’t matter) and examine the terminology of the day. “Ho” could have been a laugh, an order to charge (“Ho! go forward!”), or an interjection (“What, ho!”) Unfortunately, as social usage of words tend to dictate, yes, ho has now become synonymous with the word prostitute. However, this new equation is well, new. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

ho : exclamation of surprise, etc., c.1300; as an exclamation calling attention, c.1430. Used after the name of a place to which attention is called (cf. Westward-Ho) it dates from 1593, originally a cry of boatmen, etc., announcing departures for a particular destination. Ho-ho-ho expressing laughter is recorded from c.1150.

Emphasis mine. Now, etymology only explains the origin of words as opposed to meanings, yes, but as you can see, nowhere in the history of “ho” do you see the word “prostitute.” Why is that? Well, according to Merriam-Webster:

1965, huh? Slang, you say? So technically it isn’t even considered a “proper” word (think like that term “ain’t” I tend to throw around). Seems to me Santa has been around much longer, so for me, his version of “ho” holds a lot more weight. But I’m gonna hop off the etymology soapbox now and climb onto the feminist one.

From what I understand of the article, this change in speech is a) to avoid frightening children and to b) avoid offending women. Mhm. So, we womenfolk ain’t intelligent enough to distinguish Santa’s catchphrase from something random dude A would toss out whilst walking down the street? Seriously? I recognize where the sensitivity comes from, but come on y’all. Santa has not given anyone a reason to believe that he’s objectifying women. He’s just laughing, folks.

And as far as the children are concerned, “ho, ho, ho” isn’t what’s scary. It’s this huge man with lots of hair that they don’t know. And they have to sit in his lap. Now, if you’re 3, the unknown person is what scares the shit out of you. If Santa said “ha, ha, ha” they’d STILL be petrified…so, why alter it again?